Sat, 05 Jan 2019 09:35:13 -0800WeeblyMon, 07 May 2018 17:30:07 GMThttp://www.reinventingorganizations.com/blog/in-many-ways-i-believe-this-is-all-just-the-beginningIt’s been a long time since I have given an interview — life is so rich that I keep prioritizing other things. Perhaps because of this silence, I keep getting lots and lots of questions in email and when I meet readers What has happened since the book came out? Did you expect the book’s success? What are you up to? …

Recently, I thought I might take the questions I get most often, and weave them into an interview that would read like a conversation. So here are your questions interviewing me. :-)Q: Reinventing Organizations came out a few years ago. Can you share, from your perspective, what has happened since?

What’s happened with and around the book has been really astounding. There are so many ways to respond to this question that I’m not sure where to start. Perhaps the most essential answer is this: I believe the book has shifted the conversation, in many circles, from the frustration with all that is broken in management to a conversation of possibility. I think that’s the biggest contribution of the book overall — for many people, the question is no longer how can we fix this or that issue we have in our organization? Instead the question becomes wow, could we adopt this whole new way to structure and run our organization?Because of this sense of possibility, there are suddenly hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands and thousands, of organizations out there that are making the leap! They take a radical departure from the kind of management that is taught in business schools and adopt the new perspective outlined in the book, plus all the daily practices that sustain this shift.

]]>Mon, 11 Dec 2017 08:00:00 GMThttp://www.reinventingorganizations.com/blog/we-are-wired-to-raise-children-in-communityThis is an article I recently wrote that is related only tangentially to Reinventing Organizations, but that some of you might enjoy nevertheless.

In the West, a grand experiment has been unfolding over the last one hundred years. For thousands of years, humans had been deeply embedded within a broader net of community life — fitted within the spheres of family, social class, faith, and work. But then we shed community and embraced the nuclear family as the container for our lives. We believed this small, isolated structure would allow us to create the lives we really wanted, unencumbered by the demands of extended families, meddling neighbors, and social pressures to conform.

The demands of the collective gave way to the liberation of the individual as, at the turn of the twentieth century, rural dwellers piled into crowded cities seeking jobs. By mid-century, a post war economy made a new exodus possible, and life in the suburbs became the new ideal. Citified folks were now moving out to expansive green lawns where splendid isolation was the new dream for modern life.

More recently, hip urban centers with lively cafés, cool cultural centers, and app-reviewable restaurants have captured our collective imagination as the best place to live. Young adults, in particular, are flocking back to cities. Despite skyrocketing rents and increasingly tiny apartments, these are great places to experiment with identity, seek out one’s tribe, and eventually search for a life partner. And it’s all quite wonderful — until perhaps two people meet, settle down, and become parents.

Frederic Laloux is not doing what he’s supposed to do. It could drive a person crazy.

This summer, his hugely successful book Reinventing Organizations metamorphosed into a new form: a wiki, distilling and transposing the book’s contents into an online format. More than a hundred writers and editors were involved in the project, which essentially open-sourced and liberated the content from its author.

Cue the record-scratch what the…? moment: Creative Commons? Not the typical next move of a successful writer.

We’re more familiar with this story: book blows up, writer embarks on speaking tour, publisher solidifies the brand, author writes the sequel. And in the case of Reinventing Organizations that story would be justified. I’ve met a handful of strangers in coffee shops because I saw them reading the book and felt compelled to start a conversation. I’ve spent the last year helping guide the Whidbey Institute through their own transition to Teal (the new organizational paradigm described in the book) because of these kinds of chance encounters with a whole community of enthusiastic change agents. That teal butterfly on the book’s cover has become ubiquitous. It’s one hell of a brand.

After the launch of the wiki, Frederic and I sat down to talk about exactly that: the future of the Reinventing Organizations “brand.” Not surprisingly, as soon as I mention that word I get a bemused chuckle from Frederic.

“I’m quite purposeful about not using that word, or any other words connected to the typical ‘Orange’ marketing paradigm,” he says. ‘”I don’t consider myself, or this book, to be like a washing powder that needs to be marketed.”

His answer feels coherent with the major themes of the book. Yet I find myself a little frustrated by his response. The book’s success, relevancy, and immediacy beg the question. So I try again.

“Sure,” I say, “But where do you see all of this going?”

Because it’s going somewhere

In the early days of the wiki, I had a conversation with a CEO about his company’s journey to a self-management paradigm.

“The first time I read R.O., I thought, this is it,” the CEO said. “This is what we needed at the company; this is what we need everywhere. I’ve been handing work off to more people, and started focusing on convening people locally to have more conversations about Teal. It just feels that important.”

And then he said something I hadn’t heard anyone else say yet. Something I’ve heard a thousand times since.

He said, “I want to support the movement.”

I know what he means, because having led transformation work and lived into this thing called Teal for a while now, I can say with certainty: there is no going back. The benefits of working inside this paradigm are compelling from the outside, but from the inside, they become essential. So like many people I’ve spoken with since, I have a real vested interest in this Teal thing catching on. We have skin in the game. We’re passionate.

Passion is like fire. It thaws us out and gets us moving. Passion is a guiding light in the darkness. But it can also burn. Desensitize us to what’s outside the circle of firelight. That kind of passion is what we call blind zeal. It turns the fire into a basecamp, and those outside the circle into objects to convert or eliminate. That’s the energy of revolution.

If I’m being honest, this energy is present in me, in my conversation with Frederic. “Where is all this going?” Implicit in that question is the assumption that the person you’re asking is responsible for the answer. So in other words, I’m asking Frederic “Are you our leader?”

Just lead us how we want and nobody gets hurt

Recently a very large, influential company in an industry infamous for crippling bureaucracy initiated a conversation with Frederic about the possibility of transitioning their entire organization to self-management. The relationship had an awkward beginning.

Trying to schedule a conversation with the CEO, Frederic set some strong parameters around when he was available and for how long. With a sense that he is meant to live a simple life, and with small children at home, Frederic’s life is structured around his family and his home. Spending time in planes and hotels is not the life he wants to lead right now. Trying to schedule an initial meeting with the CEO, Frederic said he was willing to take the train for a one-day meeting. Failing that, what about skype?

“That’s not going to work,” said the assistant trying to set up the meeting with the CEO. “If the train can’t get you here on time, we need to put you on a plane the day before, and set you up in a hotel overnight. Skype is not an option.”

To the extreme annoyance and incomprehension of the assistant, Frederic declined. There was more back and forth. Finally, the assistant said in exasperation, “What is it with you?”

In other words, “Don’t you know what part you play here? Don’t you know your role? This is the CEO of a very big company. People don’t say ‘no’ to the CEO like this. They jump on planes. That’s what we expect. Who do you think you are?”

This is what those transitioning to Teal want to change. It’s Empire Era stuff all over again: bow to the crown prince, kiss the ring of the Queen. Power structures turning people into objects. Who do you think you are?

We know how a CEO should act.We know how a consultant should work.We know how a successful author should behave.We know how a movement leader needs to show up.

So here I come, months later, asking Frederic the question, “Where is all this going?” With all my expectations around Visionaries and Movements tied up in the question. With all my hopes and dreams for the future of “Teal” bound up in the asking. Reinventing Organizations lit a fire. Now I want to be a part of the revolution, and it’s time to set up basecamp. So lead us, Fred.

“Where is all this going?”

And I think Fred senses all of this in my question when he says, “I don’t know.”

“I see the book as being one wave in what’s really an ocean,” he says. “There is so much energy out there around this topic, that it would be foolish for me to pretend I know how this energy will manifest and bloom. To stay with the metaphor of nature that is so present in ‘Teal’: nature in all its abundance is incredibly efficient; it often uses very little energy to achieve a lot. That’s what I sense my role should be.

“This is an interesting period for me, figuring out what this role could be in the midst of everything happening around the book. There is much in our culture that pushes me to be become a public person, to try to milk this unexpected success. I regularly get approached by people who want to help me market this on a grand scale, to help me become a brand.“But I know that just doesn’t feel like something I want to do. I sense that a more powerful stance, paradoxically, is not to be a forceful, highly visible leader, but to hold a space where everyone who has energy and talent to contribute feels invited. That’s how lots of things start to bubble up, to appear out of nowhere that I could never have imagined, couldn’t have forced into existence.

“That also seems to fit well with my temperament. I personally don’t have a need to be very visible, to be center stage, to be carrying the torch of a movement. On the other hand, when I’m on a stage, I really have a blast, so if there are some places where the visibility the book has given me can be put to good use, I won’t shy away from it.“So my question to you and to others is: Where do you want to take this budding movement? What initiative will you take? I’m happy to be a sparring partner in the process, and if I can, to give a nudge at a critical juncture.”

Nudges. Can a sea-change in our society – a movement, a revolution – survive on nudges?“The energy to reinvent organizations is out there, I don’t need to try and create it. People keep approaching me with ideas and things they want to contribute. People around the world offering to pay to make a translation happen. A wonderful person in upstate NY who bought himself a home studio to record an audiobook version, and he turns out to have the most amazing voice and talent, even though he has never done this before. Two people stepping up to create Enlivening Edge, a Teal newsletter, and a month later they are a team of 20 people. Someone in Brazil who wants to create a software game: 52 weeks in a Teal company. And I could go on… Isn’t that amazing?

“They don’t need much from me, other than perhaps an encouragement, or to be put in touch with someone else. Now let’s imagine for a minute that at the outset, I had created a masterplan of where I want us to be in 3 years’ time or in ten years’ time. I’ve worked for a long time at McKinsey, a consulting firm, and believe me, I could still make you a plan that would look pretty impressive.” (Fred laughs). “But the Teal companies I researched taught me how much more powerful sense and respond can be, compared to predict and control. If I tried to control what’s happening, to force this into a certain direction, I would be severely limiting its potential. I’m convinced that many people wouldn’t have stepped up if they felt the course was already charted.

“So I’m trying to learn what it means to hold the space, to invite, to be visible as much and as little as I think is needed. And be surprised, just as much as you, by how this all unfolds.”

Vive la teal?

What we’re seeing now is a fractal pattern implicit in this new way of working. The same mindset that drives our wanting to write masterplans is the same mindset calling for revolution. We can move beyond both. What we’re after isn’t an ideal state, a promised land, a dream. What we want is fluid, adaptive, and human. If we do this Teal thing right, the only guarantee is that we’ll be surprised.

That’s what happened for Frederic. Perhaps the book never would have emerged at all if the author hadn’t been willing to ask a different kind of question of himself. In 2011, he realized, almost from one day to the next, that he could no longer work in his capacity of executive coach and consultant with the large, traditional and pretty soulless organizations he had been working with. From an interview with Enlivening Edge:

“I figured the right question for me was, what would be the most meaningful thing I could do with my life right now? Not even ‘with my life in general?’, not ‘how could I have most impact with my life?’ No, just what is most meaningful thing right now. I figured: if I do that, I trust that the universe will help and will provide me with an income. I just couldn’t believe that if I did the most meaningful thing I could do the universe wouldn’t support me. And when I put the question in this way, the answer was immediate. I wanted to focus on two projects that felt profoundly meaningful to me. And one was the research that led to the book Reinventing Organizations.”

After Frederic and I hang up, I sit for a while and wrestle with the irony. I wanted the Reinventing Organizations Movement strategic plan. I wanted a leader to rally around. Instead Frederic handed me the same invitation he extended to himself, three years before that teal butterfly ever graced a book cover. It’s the same invitation extended inside Teal to anyone.

It’s natural to ask “Where all this Teal stuff is going?” but perhaps we’re outgrowing that sort of question. We’ll never know where we’re going until we are further down the road, and look back and see what has unfolded. The only thing that makes sense is to ask the one question that life keeps posing to its constituents, every moment of every day. It’s a question pulling equal parts trust and responsibility out of the asker. It’s a simple question: evolutionary, my dear Watson.

MKM: Frederic, after your talk at the RSA, a few people walked up to you to engage in a conversation. One of them asked you to share how you got to write the book Reinventing Organizations. I found your answer as inspiring as the talk, in some ways. Would you share that journey with our readers?

It’s interesting you ask this, because I don’t find my journey to be very remarkable. Reinventing Organizations was something that wasn’t planned, that just happened, and in many ways happened rather effortlessly. But then again, I’ve sometimes heard people who had done something that felt like work of their soul say that when they look back, it almost seems like everything in their life had prepared them for that work. That is somehow how it feels for me when it comes to this book. So perhaps that’s what I can talk about.

I could go back all the way to my early childhood to find the earliest strands but that might end up being a long story (laughs), so let’s start with my professional life. I worked for 10 years with a large consulting firm, McKinsey & Company. Starting in my mid-twenties, I was exposed to a great number of organizations, a great number of leaders, of executive committees. In many ways, I could not have written Reinventing Organizations without this broad exposure. I’ve had insights into the dynamics of business and of people that I would not have had if I had worked in just one or two large corporations and climbed the ladder there.

At the same time, during those years at McKinsey, I always felt conflicted. On the one hand, the work was playing to many of my strengths and talents, and I enjoyed it. On the other, there was always this lingering sense of “What am I doing here? What is the purpose of it all?” I never really fully fitted in. Every morning when I put on a suit and tie, I felt like I was dressing up and looked like a penguin (laughs). When I was at the airport or checking out of a four star hotel, there would be business people in suits all standing in line, and I wanted to tell them all: what are you doing? Get out of that suit, get a life! The irony that I was dressed just like them, doing just the same things, was only half lost on me. I always knew I didn’t want to become a partner at McKinsey. For a long time I thought: I’m going to do this for another six months, until I figure out what I’m really meant to do. It just always took me longer than six months to figure that out.

And then one day, I had this extraordinarily powerful coaching session with a woman that brought great clarity on a number of issues. She helped me understand some of the patterns of my parents’ lives, and why I had stayed with McKinsey when my heart told me it was time to move on. A month later I resigned.

MKM: What did you do when you left McKinsey?

When I left, I built up my own practice as a coach and facilitator with leaders of large organizations. I had realized that what I loved most about my work at McKinsey were those moments where I would engage with executives in deeply personal conversations, behind closed doors. At the time, these were often just conversations for a few minutes, but in many ways they felt more important to me than thinking about great organizational strategies. These were conversations where executives felt safe enough to drop their mask and enquire into essential questions that they normally never discuss with colleagues. I discovered that I seemed to have a natural talent to help people feel safe enough to do that for while, to drop their mask and go deeper.

In 2007, I spent time with Newfield Network, a wonderful coaching training developed by Julio Olalla, a really masterful coach. The learning there couldn’t be more different from the learning I had at McKinsey, and it opened many new horizons for me. I learned to love and to care. Imagine that. A place where you can learn to love. I learned that emotions, intuition, and the body are places of great intelligence and insights, that they are domains of learning, too. I realized that wisdom isn’t just something that may happen to us when we get old, but something that we can try to cultivate.

And so I found a passion and calling: to coach people and facilitate Executive Committees to have the kind of conversations that people typically don’t dare to have at these levels.

MKM: What perspectives did you gain from these years working as a coach?

I saw there was a lot of suffering in organizations, and not just at the lower levels. There are lots of surveys that show that an overwhelming majority – two-thirds to three-quarters of people in organizations – feel disempowered, feel disengaged from their work. They really just come to get a pay-check but don’t come with their heart to work and certainly not with their soul.

This suffering at the lower levels is well-known, but at McKinsey, and especially working as a coach, I discovered a dirty secret: there is much suffering at the top levels of organizations as well. You have these very powerful CEOs and top managers who seem to have it all and who seem to enjoy themselves, but when you scratch the surface it quickly becomes clear that they are tired and exhausted. If you can have a really quiet moment with them, if you can close the door, and have beautiful coaching conversations like I’ve had with quite a few of them, you sense that they’re tired of being caught in a rat race, to be in a system that somehow forces them to play politics, to keep their guard up all the time. There is a frantic busyness, running from meeting to meeting, that often helps them suppress a nagging and painful question: what’s the meaning of it all? Is this really how I want to spend my life?

Those were of course some of the questions we would get at in the coaching sessions. Some of the executives would be daring enough to drop their guard for real and sit with these questions and reassess their lives. A few ended leaving their organization because they realized they had better things to do than wasting their lives playing along in the rat race. Deep inside, I was very happy for them, happy that they were so brave to listen to their inner voice. But of course, this meant that I was often being paid by organizations to help great executives leave. If I was honest with myself, I wasn’t helping the organization get any healthier.

The same was true of my facilitation work. On a two-day off-site, members of an executive team might drop their mask and dare to talk, say, about the lack of trust and the politics in the team. You could sense a great sense of relief at having a safe space where these otherwise taboo issues could finally be discussed. But when the off-site was over, the power of the system hit back, and they quickly reverted back to the same behaviors.

MKM: I guess that’s an experience that many coaches share?

Don’t get me wrong: for a number of years this coaching work felt tremendously fulfilling to me. I thought I had discovered my calling and this was ‘it’, this is going to be me for the next 20-30 years. For a few years, I felt like I had really hit the jackpot. My work felt very meaningful and on the family side… everything was fantastic. I worked much less than I used to, leaving me lots of time for my personal development, and to live a good and simple life.

But then after just a few years later, life gave me a signal that I had come to another juncture. This happened when, quite unexpectedly, in the spring of 2011, I was hit with a deep inner sadness. It took me two or three weeks to make sense of it, because everything was going so well in my life. And then I understood: the sadness was a form of grief. The work that had brought me so much joy for the last few years was work that I suddenly couldn’t do any longer. It was as if my soul were saying, “Enough! You are meant to move on again!” And I had thought that I had found my vocation, found what I would do for the next 20 years of my life!

Over the years I had gone on a fair bit of a personal and spiritual journey, doing a lot of personal development work. I had grown to a place that was quite far away from where most of the CEOs and Executives that I was working with were at.

MKM: I remember you said you were “tired of the game of translation”.

Yes, I realized I was constantly in a game of ‘translation’ with the executives I was working with. This game of “how far can I go in showing them a whole different perspective, show them how I see things, before it will be too much for them and they kick me out of the room?”

I realised that I couldn’t work with these large corporations any more. There was a tangible, physical side to it, something about just going into these large organizations that I felt was draining, almost depressing. You know, the grand but soulless marble and glass lobbies of these big corporations. And all these managers running around hurriedly, talking about one more change project and cross-functional initiative and mid-term planning and budget exercise. I felt like stopping them in their tracks and asking them “do you still believe in any of this?” For me, it didn’t make any sense any more.

And so it was very clear, really from one day to the other, that I could no longer do the work of coaching and facilitation that had been so meaningful to me. At that moment, I had a powerful insight. For some reason, I realized the right question for me to ask was not: “What will my next work be? What will I put on my business card? What will my identity be?” These would have been the natural questions to ask. Instead, I figured the right question for mewas “what would be the most meaningful thing I could do with my life right now?”. Not even “with my life in general?”, not “how could I have most “impact” with my life?” No, just what is most meaningful thing right now. I figured: if I do that, I trust that the universe will help and will provide me with an income. I just couldn’t believe that if I did the most meaningful thing I could do the universe wouldn’t support me.

And when I put the question in this way, the answer was immediate. I wanted to focus on two projects that felt profoundly meaningful to me. And one was the research that led to the book Reinventing Organizations. That was the beginning of what would turn out to be an almost three-year sabbatical, in which I did just a little bit of work doing two weeks of training workshops to pay some bills, tapping into savings for the rest.

MKM: What were you looking for as you started your research for ‘Reinventing Organizations’?

At that time, I was familiar with theories of human development – work from Jenny Wade, Ken Wilber, Spiral Dynamics, etc. So I had language to talk about what had happened to me. I was essentially tired of working with senior executives who see the world from an ‘Orange’ perspective, when I had taken on a whole different world view.

I was fascinated by the question: what would really healthy, really evolved organizations look like? I knew that there are an increasing number of people who go through an inner transformation and end up leaving their organizations, just as I left McKinsey. Business leaders leaving their corporations because they are tired of the politics. Doctors and nurses leaving their hospitals, because hospitals are for the most part soulless medical factories. Teachers leaving their schools. I figured: not all of them become coaches and consultants from the sidelines in the way I had. Some of them must have felt called to start a new business, school or hospital. I wondered if they had found ways to build different ways to structure and run their organizations, that would be aligned with the inner journey they had made.

That was what got me started on the research that basically three years later became Reinventing Organizations. My first hope, frankly, was that someone had done this research already and that I didn’t need to do it myself (laughs). I started reading many books in the area, but I didn’t really find anything that was going in the direction that I had in mind. Most were writing about empowering, culture-driven organizations. I find these organizations very inspiring, but I sensed there can be even more.

So I started looking for “Teal” organizations and I came across one, two, three… really extraordinary organizations that quite radically put aside almost all of the management edifice that we’re being taught in business school. They had reinvented many of the most basic structures and practices of management: how you make decisions, how you recruit people, how you evaluate people, how you compensate people, how you make budgets, how you make targets, how you make strategies. And the result seemed to be extraordinarily vibrant, powerful and soulful organizations.

What got me really excited was when I started noticing that these different organizations that operate in very different industries and geographies had often stumbled upon almost identical practices, even though they didn’t know of each other.

That to me was really, really exciting, because I felt: this is more than just some mavericks doing their thing. There is a coherent new way to structure and run organizations, a coherent new management paradigm that seems to be emerging. An organizational model consistent with the form of consciousness that’s also emerging in the world right now. Something that right now is still very much in an early stage, but that perhaps in 20 or 30 years might become commonplace. That’s when I decided to write the book.

I’m still amazed that most of us had never heard about the organizations I stumbled upon, nor have most of the academics in the field. It’s a really fascinating question to me: why haven’t these incredibly interesting—and dramatically successful—organizations been more researched before? The reason, I came to understand, is that these organizations are so odd that they simply don’t make any sense from today’s management perspective. The few articles that had been published about one of them here or there described them as strange creatures that are oddly successful. Often the article wondered how long they could keep it up, or if this could ever work elsewhere, because really these management methods don’t make any sense. I guess it’s only when you see a number of them that you can see the profound wisdom in the apparent madness, that you can notice that there are some profound commonalities that point to a coherent new model.

MKM: How do you see the journey going forward?

I really have no idea. This question “what is the most meaningful thing you could do with your life right now” is still very present for me. I hope I can live from that place for the rest of my life. As Parker Palmer says, I want to “listen to the life that wants to be lived through me”. I feel that I’m not the kind of person meant to do something for 20 or 30 years. So we will see what life has in store for me!

For now, I feel very blessed that the book is getting such a wonderful reception, and that I can be involved in a number of projects that can help leaders bring their organizations to “Teal”. As you know, a few weeks ago we launched an online conversation platform where these leaders can share their questions, doubts and insight. And just a few days ago, a hundred enthusiasts got together and launched a wiki that gives them very concrete and detailed ideas and case examples for every major Teal practice. There are several more projects in the works that might turn out to create a whole little ecosystem of support for organizations going Teal. That’s really exciting, and it feels to me like that will carry me for another two or three years.

MKM: The book is very successful, which shows that many people are ready to see organizations from a new perspective. What is your experience with more traditional executives: do you find that they respond to these ideas?

I wrote the book for people who would “get this”, who would be open to these ideas. My goal wasn’t to try and convince people with a more traditional outlook to adopt this model. That’s one of the reasons I self-published the book. I didn’t want to take the risk that a publisher would reposition the book to appeal to a wider audience by marketing it as “the book that gives you the secret keys to more profits and market share”. Boy, I would have hated that! (laughs).

But soon after the book came out, I gave one or two talks to audiences of managers whom I suspect mostly have a more traditional, achievement-orientated worldview (Orange). I was quite prepared that they would boo me off the stage, would dismiss this all as naïve and wishful thinking. I was quite surprised to see that at some level, everything I said made sense. I spoke to some real pain that they feel but are usually trying not to see. Everyone today senses that something is broken in the way we run organizations.Now I know that my talk didn’t magically change their perspective. But for the time of the talk, I put many of them into a big cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, they could see how self-management, wholeness and evolutionary purpose make sense, how it must be more powerful than what we have now. I could see them wanting this. On the other hand, for many of them, there was also a part that that was trying to find a reason to reject it all. ‘Can this really work?’ ‘Yes, but what happens if… ?’ Lots of ‘what ifs?’. As if they were hoping to find an obvious flaw in my presentation, so that they could go safely back to the certainty that there is no alternative to the current way, however painful.

​I find that quite fascinating. Everyone senses there must be something better out there, even though some people can’t embrace it quite yet. I don’t feel called to convince, to evangelize, that’s simply not my nature. But I think there is work to do to speak even to more traditional audiences, to plant seeds, however uncomfortable, of new possibilities (laughs).

]]>Sat, 21 Mar 2015 20:27:12 GMThttp://www.reinventingorganizations.com/blog/voters-are-being-told-a-lie-there-is-no-need-to-cut-public-servicesSo begins a great article in the Guardian (http://bit.ly/1DlL6rT). The journalist picked up the story of Buurtzorg from the book “Reinventing Organizations” and wonders if it heralds a fundamental alternative to the story that we are doomed to reduce public services to reduce costs. I hadn’t quite looked at it that way, but I find it a very powerful thought.

Buurtzorg’s case shows that sometimes we look for saving in the wrong place entirely. The real savings in home care comes not from shaving of 1 minute of changing a compression stocking. It comes from giving such great care that patients heal faster or become more autonomous, and so come out of care much more quickly, reducing care by hours, weeks or years, not minutes. And that the key to that is small, autonomous teams that aren’t prevented to give good care by well-meaning but flawed centrally-designed procedures, policies, bureaucracies… I’m convinced this applies to all of health care (think hospitals!), not just home care.

This morning, there was a 10 minute piece on this in the BBC’s flagship Today program, for which both Jos de Blok and me are interviewed (how cool is that? :)). Jos impressed me again with his simple common sense - he has a knack for making anything other that self-management sound gently absurd. (http://bbc.in/1FSCudX, starting minute 33).

The guardian article stimulated me to think about it more broadly, beyond home care and health care. The more I think about it, the more I’m excited by the prospect that new forms of thinking will bring the same kind of breakthroughs to many domains. Take teaching. The real savings don’t come from reducing costs for teachers. It will come from children no longer dropping out, from children feeling so whole, so valuable, so powerful (as they do in the ESBZ in Berlin I speak about in the book and many other innovative school that are popping up) that they don’t drop out, don’t fall on the wayside, don’t turn to crime to make a living or feel powerful.

Or take our flawed justice system. We know from experiences everywhere in the world that restorative justice systems work better for victims and for perpetrators. And they are radically cheaper to run, as the rates of incarceration go down dramatically as do the rate of reoffending. Imagine what we could do with all the money saved by closing prisons, and how much richer the lives of our communities would be.

Perhaps it will take a few more years for these ideas to be acceptable in a broader public discourse. I’m curious when a political will pick up on these ideas. In any case, I think Mark Thompson, who wrote the piece in the guardian, is onto a very powerful idea: what if we could increase public services rather than cut them, but adopting a different perspective on purpose and different management practices? He’s got me thinking about this a lot. I think indeed we are told a lie. Not lied to on purpose. But there is another way to deal with budget cuts that could, paradoxically, help us shift to better times.

]]>Fri, 19 Sep 2014 11:25:48 GMThttp://www.reinventingorganizations.com/blog/what-a-rideUn update on the last few months

“Reinventing Organizations” came out half a year ago, and I want to share with you a bit of the wonderful and unexpected journey it has been. The book got a furious reception! So much so that I have been overwhelmed and have failed almost completely in keeping the blog and the facebook page alive.

Here is an update, in random order, of the many wonderful things that have been unfolding. This post is also meant as an invitation if you want to participate and contribute in one way or another.

A word-of-mouth phenomenon

Soon, the book we hit the mark of 10,000 books sold. That's a very rare mark to achieve for any book, let alone a self-published book that isn't stocked in any book store and was launched with no PR and no marketing budget. It's all thanks to so many of you talking enthusiastically about the book with friends and colleagues. This just fills me with joy and gratitude. I've received many emails from readers telling me they resonated so deeply with the book that they bug everyone to read it :-) Some have bought 10, 20 or more books to offer them as gifts.

The book is starting to change organizations

The book is starting to transform organizations, and that really thrills me of course. I’ve been contacted by organizations ranging from 2 to… 60,000 people who are inspired to go “Teal”. In the mix are the most wonderful organizations, from established businesses to tech startups, from art venues to retreat centers, from men’s groups to hospitals… More people seem to be ready to embrace this change at the top of organizations than I thought a few months ago

Testimonials

If you, too, have started implementing some of this in your organization (or helped to do it as a coach or consultant), would you be willing to write something about it?

I plan to create a section on the book’s website for such testimonials, that I feel could stimulate others and give them the courage to follow their heart and build more soulful organizations.

Video

I’ve been invited to give many talks. One was filmed and beautifully edited and is now online:

Perhaps you have friends or colleagues who you’d like to share the ideas of the book with, but who might not want to read a book about it. The video can be a great way for them to hear about the main ideas of this work.

Readers taking it into their own hands

What I totally love is that quite a few readers have started to give talks about the book too! If you feel like giving a talk yourself, you can find here some of the slides they put together (as well as the ones I used in the video above). We can create a bit of an open-source community here where we exchange and build upon each other’s presentation materials.

And it’s not just talks.

Many consultants and coaches use insights from the book it in their consulting offer.

University professors have integrated this material into their courses (most notably Robert Kegan who made some chapters assigned reading at the Harvard School of Education).

Other readers have created book clubs to get more deeply into the book.

Translations

The book will be published in Danish, German and French in the Spring of 2015, and probably in Dutch too. Thank you to the many readers who have spontaneously reached out to editors to make this happen! (and who are currently scheming for translation into Mandarin, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Brazilian, Spanish…)

A few wonderful projects on their way

A few wonderful projects are on their way to build on the book’s content. Several of these projects have been initiated by readers, rather than me, which is just great.

A wiki to expand on the research.

A 3-day immersive simulation for students of business schools.

An illustrated, introductory version of the book.

An online seminar for organizational leaders and consultants.

A learning gathering for Teal organizations

These projects are pretty exciting, but I’ll hold back and wait until we are further along to share more. (Do subscribe to updates if you want to be informed)

And in all this, there’s been much learning for me

On a personal note, the last few months have been quite a journey. I’ve been humbled and overjoyed to witness how much the book resonates with readers. For me, the research that lead to the book helped me shift my inner dialogue from what is broken with management today to what is possible. It seems the book has helped many readers make the same hopeful shift.

I also learnt that I was right in follow my heart in the way I published and marketed this work. Early on I decided I would self-publish the book, rather than seek the endorsement of a big name in the publishing industry. I also read quite a lot of material on how you should market books, and quickly decided these marketing practices didn’t feel right. I thought about doing the whole Twitter and Facebook thing, and found this wasn’t for me. So I basically decided I would just listen to what feels right, and that brought me to take a contrarian approach to pretty much all the accepted practices in publishing and marketing a book. That the book is turning into somewhat of a phenomenon despite all this can only be explained as either a mystery, or the vindication that we should follow our hearts in whatever we do.

There has also been a more painful learning. I’m learning to say “no”, something I know I needed to learn for a long time J. The number of emails I now receive, and the number of invitations to connect or to give talks simply exceeds what I can offer, and there no longer is a way for me to say “yes” when I shouldn’t. Boy, I’ll be happy when I’ll have mastered that skill, and more generally when I’ll have learned to maintain and appreciate a very simply life in the midst of what now feels like overwhelm.

In the last few months, I’ve become really interested by the concept and the practice of the gift economy. You may know that the book is available in “Pay-What-Feels-Right” mode. With some clients that asked me to help them in their organization’s journey to Teal, I’m also now working based on this principle. I’ve written a blog post about the topic, and I know I’m just at the beginning here. The more I reflect about the gift economy, the more I feel this is how I want to work in the future.

An open invitation

If you want to incorporate the ideas of the book in some of your work or some form of project, go for it! Give talks about it, create a webinar, include it in your consulting work. I think we need more soulful businesses, nonprofits, schools and hospitals, so whatever you do, I’ll be really grateful.

I don’t want to mess with trademarking concepts from the book and then licensing this work. Of course I put energy and some skills (I hope) in formalizing these ideas, but they really are not mine. They come from the extraordinary organizations I researched. And I would claim that they come from a deeper source, that is releasing these ideas into our consciousness at this moment in time.

This being said, if you make explicit reference to the book or to me in the marketing of your offer, and make sure it doesn't sound like I would vouch for your offer. I want to avoid any confusion with clients who might assume otherwise when the see the reference to the book.

And if the content of the book helps you earn revenues, you can ask yourself, in line with the principles of the gift economy, if you feel it would be right to gift something back to me. There is no obligation to give anything. Just listen to you heart, and see if it wants to give something back.

I'm grateful and curious

I’m very grateful for all that is unfolding, and curious what comes next. Feel free to share with me how the book or this blog post is resonating with you. I will read what you send me, and thank you in my heart for it. If I do no answer, don't be mad, I’m learning to manage overwhelm ;-)

Researching and writing "Reinventing Organizations" has felt like work of the soul to me, something much in my life has prepared me to do. In many ways, the process has been wonderfully easy. We often hear from people saying how writing a book or getting it published has been a painful process. I was blessed that everything just seemed to flow (even though it was of course a lot of work), an indication perhaps that this was work I was meant to do.

And yet, there have been much personal learning for me in the process. For instance, I've learnt (well I'm still learning) to say "no" to many of the demands I get for connecting with readers, giving talks and doing consulting, simply because the numbers of request exceed what I can offer. Saying "no" has always been difficult for me, and now life has brought me to a place where I simply have to learn to do it, and learn to do it as gracefully as I can.

One type of learning I wasn't expecting was that I'd become fascinated and learn to work in the gift economy. Hey I didn't even really know about the concept (I got a crash course reading Charles Eisenstein's book Sacred Economics). The idea, to oversimplify, is to live from abundance, from a place where you give your time, your skills, your passion, and others give back (in money or otherwise) whatever feels right to them. No more contracting, no more fixed prices. Instead, much more love for the work and deeper connection between people. ​

The book as a first experiment

I started experimenting with the book. You can purchase the kindle/iBook/pdf version of the book at $9.95 from any major retailer of from this website. Or you can download it in pay-what-feels-right mode (my term, I prefer it to "pay what you want", which to me has got somewhat of an ego-appealing "I-can-do-whatever-I-want" kind of ring to it). You download the book for free, and make the moral commitment to gift back, a month later or whenever you are done reading, whatever amount (or other gift) feels right to you.

The experiment has worked wonderfully for me. I'm of course very happy when people buy the book in paper version or the e-version at a fixed price. It means the ideas get spread, and I get a few dollars of income. But I just love the pay-what-feels-right. Any donation triggers an email into my inbox, and stirs my curiosity: what has this book been worth to this person? Has she left a personal note?

I've had someone in Kenya donating $2, and telling me that was a big donation for him. And I've had readers give me $100 and $200 because that's what the book was worth to them. (Here is a nice blog post of someone talking about his perspective as a reader and why he ended up giving more than the list price).

Of course, the usual fears popped up at first: will people not just take advantage of the system? Why will anyone buy the book if they can just download it and never pay for it? But somehow these fears faded as quickly as they came up. Some people do indeed download the book and never donate. And you know what? I feel that's ok too. I guess that just comes with the territory. Overall, I feel I've received as much if not more than what I've given. Somehow people respond to this experiment in wonderful ways, it creates a goodwill I didn't anticipate. I get back so much from readers in all sorts of ways that I can't even begin to say how blessed I feel. And, if I'm honest with myself, I'm somehow proud of myself that I did go for this experiment. And I guess that feeling good about myself, even if it's the good old ego flattering itself a bit, isn't such a bad thing, is it?

Consulting in the gift

And so I've started working at times in the gift in my other work too. As the book is getting a lot of traction, leaders of many different organizations ask me to be a sparring partner in their journey to transform their organization. This is wonderful work to be involved in! With some of them, that are open to the idea, I now work in the gift. At the end of every quarter I tell them how much time we've spent together, and they donate whatever feels right to them.

Most people actually prefer working with a fixed price. I guess it is because the fixed price takes away the possibly awkward discussion about how much you give. And I can fully understand that. Let's put ourselves in their shoes for a minute: If I give less than Frederic was expecting, will he be hurt, or think I'm stingy? And if I give more, am I giving too much? But it's precisely in that question that lies the genius of the gift economy, because it pushes us to reflect on what value we have exchanged, on our relationship with money, and our relationship to one another.

Inviting everyone to take ownership of this work in the spirit of gift

The spirit of working in the gift has also found its way in my relationship with consultants and trainers who are incorporating the insights from the book into their work. Within a few days of the book being published, people asked me if they could take this material and build consulting offers or training offers around it. My response, off the cuff, was "of course, just go for it!"

I didn't want to mess with trademarking concepts from the book and then licensing this work. Hey, of course I put energy and some skills (I hope) in formalizing these ideas, but they really are not mine. They come from the extraordinary organizations I researched. And I would even claim that they come from a deeper source, that is releasing these ideas into our consciousness at this moment in time.

Since then, though, I've come to give a slightly different answer. I still don't want to trademark and license. I don't want to control if and how people use these ideas. I think we need more soulful businesses, nonprofits, schools and hospitals, so I want these ideas to spread as much as possible, and I'm really happy that so many people want to play a part in this. But rather then just say "do whatever you want", I found that the principles of the gift economy make sense to me here too.

And so now, when people ask me if they can use this work in their consulting or in trainings or seminars they develop, I tell them "sure, go ahead". And I add two things:

If you make explicit reference to the book or to me in the marketing of your offer, make sure it's clear that I'm not involved, and make sure it doesn't sound like I would vouch for your offer. I want to avoid any confusion with clients who might assume otherwise when the see the reference to my work.

And I ask you to ask yourself, at the end of the day, if you feel it would be right to gift something back to me. There is no obligation to give anything. Don't reason in terms of percentages or any other mathematical formula. Just listen to you heart, and see if it wants to give something back. The goal is that you feel everything is right, that the energetic exchange feels completed, that your heart is smiling.

Just the beginning

I'm sure this is just the beginning of the journey for me. I sense that our economic system will shift, slowly at first, and then more and more toward the gift economy. I wrote this blog post because I'm eager to open a conversation around this topic. What thoughts do my early experiments trigger with you? Have you practiced working in the gift economy? If you do, how is it going for you? Have you been on the other side, giving back to someone for his gift? How did that feel for you?

]]>Sat, 12 Jul 2014 09:33:36 GMThttp://www.reinventingorganizations.com/blog/guest-post-unfolding-the-future-togetherThis is a post written by Tony Chamberlain, author of "The Congruence Framework". It gives a wonderful overview of what the book is about, and so I'm delighted that Tony agreed for me to publish it here. It is based on a piece Tony wrote a few weeks ago, where he contrasts the findings from my research with his own "Congruence Framework)

﻿Unfolding the future together﻿

How emerging organisational models are responding to a shift in global consciousness.

‘Can we create organisations free of the pathologies that show up all too often in the workplace? Free of politics, bureaucracy, and infighting; free of stress and burnout; free of resignation, resentment and apathy; free of posturing at the top and the drudgery at the bottom? Is it possible to reinvent organisations, to devise a new model that makes work productive, fulfilling and meaningful? Can we create soulful workplaces – schools, hospitals, businesses and non-profits – where our talent can bloom and our callings can be honored?’

Frederic Laloux asks these questions in his book Reinventing Organisations. The answers, he suggests, are to be found partly in our history, which tells us that ‘with every stage of human consciousness also came a breakthrough in our ability to collaborate, bringing about a new organisational model’.

Laloux traces this development from 100,000 BC to the present, observing a gradual but accelerating evolution from simple ‘family kinships’ to ever more collaborative and powerful forms of organizations. He shows how at this moment we are at another historical juncture. The current management methods start to feel outdated, exhausted. And a new organisational model is emerging, a radical new way to structure and run organizations. He calls this the Evolutionary-Teal model (ET model). The ET model’s development can be seen as a response to an expanding global consciousness – a growing awareness that ‘the ultimate goal in life is not to be successful or loved, but to become the truest expression of ourselves . . . and to be of service to humanity and our world . . . [to see life] as a journey of personal and collective unfolding towards our true nature’.

Many writers and commentators refer to this expansion of global consciousness as the ‘rise of mindfulness’.

Laloux’s contribution is to have identified a dozen pioneering organizations that, responding to this shift in global consciousness, already operate on the new Evolutionary-Teal model. He has researched their ways of working, and shows how much these organizations depart from traditional management practices, and what a consistent new set of principles and practices they have developed instead For instance, the founders of these ET organisations all talk about trying to create workplaces that operate as 'living organisms' – workplaces that embrace the 'adaptive, flexible, self-renewing, resilient, learning, intelligent-attributes found only in living systems’ (Margaret Wheatley).

Laloux’s studies also revealed 'three breakthroughs' in the way that ET organisations focus on engaging their organisational community, three bold departures from management as it is told in business school today. These organizations demonstrated:

A commitment to an evolutionary purpose – collaborating with their people to unfold a future grounded in a shared purpose, Leaders in these companies assume they their organizations have 'a life and sense of direction of their own'; So rather than trying to pursue a predicted future through strategies, plans and budgets, they engage the whole organisational community to 'listening in to their organisation's deep creative potential... and understanding...the purpose it intends to serve'.

An emphasis on wholeness – an invitation for the ‘whole person’ to participate in a workplace where each person’s ‘emotional, intuitive and spiritual parts’ are welcome and respected and where the adoption of ‘social masks’ becomes irrelevant and therefore unnecessary. ET organisations create workplaces that 'support people's longing to be fully themselves at work and yet deeply involved in nourishing relationships [that build]...wholeness and community'

A preference for self-management – replacing the constraints of traditional hierarchical control systems with agile self-organising systems that are enabled by [collaborative] peer relationships. Laloux observes that 'People who are new to the idea of self-management sometimes mistakenly assume that it simply means taking the hierarchy out of an organization and running everything democratically based on consensus. There is, of course, much more to it. Self-management, just like the traditional pyramidal model it replaces, works with an interlocking set of structures and practices' to support new ways of sharing information, making decisions, and resolving conflicts.

There is much interest today in mindfulness practices in organizations. Even Wall Street banks are starting to offer their overworked bankers courses in mindfulness. Mindfulness is often used as a way to help people deal with pressure, stress and unhealthy corporate cultures. It is interesting to note that the practices for ‘evolutionary purpose, wholeness and self-management’, which characterise ET organisations, weave mindfulness deeply into the fabric of the organizations. So much so that few organizations researched by Laloux spend much time talking about the concept. Mindfulness is no longer an add-on.

The same holds true for another concept many organizations aspire to embrace: the learning organization. The evolutionary self-organising and self-managing nature of these organisations turns them into natural learning organizations. So much so that the none of these organizations spends any conscious effort to become a learning organization. This reminds us that mindfulness and learning are natural human conditions, part of our wholeness, and that organisations that evolve by listening to their communities will find these practices emerge quite naturally as part of their operating culture.

For those of us interested in how we can 'create soulful workplaces...where our talent can bloom and our callings can be honoured', Laloux's case studies provide a wealth of practical examples of how we can 'reinvent [our] organisations, to devise a new model that makes work productive, fulfilling and meaningful'.

When you read this book you will be encouraged to find that new organisations of this sort are emerging in diverse industries and across different geographies. Some organizations that Laloux researched are businesses and others are non-profits. Some are in manufacturing, others in food processing, retail, media and IT. There are hospitals, nursing organizations and schools. Some have hundreds, others thousands or even tens of thousands of employees. With all that diversity, these organizations share a great many common structures and practices, modeling new ways of engaging with their communities to unfold their future together.

The book “Reinventing Organizations”, which I've spent much time on over the last 3 years, is... out! It can be purchased on Amazon.com, Amazon.fr, or downloaded from the book's website (in pdf/kindle/iBook format).

The book in at nutshell

Based on extensive research of pioneering organizations, the book tells the story of the emergence of a new management paradigm, a whole new way to structure and operate organizations. It makes for radically more soulful, purposeful and productive workplaces.

Part 1 of the book shows how in the past, at every turning point in history, we have transitioned to a more powerful management paradigm, and argues that we are ready for the next shift.

Part 2 describes in great detail how these organizations operate, based on a dozen case examples.

Part 3 discusses the necessary conditions and practical ways for new or existing organizations to adopt this new way of operating.

My hope is that the book contributes to the emergence of truly soulful organizations. The book uses cases examples from a wide range of industries (and geographies), and so I hope that it might inspire leaders not only of businesses, but also of nonprofits, schools or hospitals who are frustrated/disillusioned with the current way we run these places... but wonder if there is a better way.

In all these areas, we could really do with more inspiring and purposeful organizations!

Two experiments in abundance

I’m quite excited about an experiment that I dubbed “Pay-What-Feels-Right”. From the book’s website, readers can download the book at a fixed price of $9.95. Or they can download it freely, and receive an automatic email a month later inviting them to gift back whatever value they feel they have received from the book. It’s an experiment in abundance, and I’m curious how it will play out. Also, in the same spirit of abundance, I’ve decided to share the book for free with networks that work towards a better world. For instance, all 2,000 social entrepreneurs of Ashoka's network will receive the book and hopefully many will be inspired to infuse their efforts with the book’s ideas!

(If you know of a network that would want to participate, feel free to let them know they can contact me if interested.)

A wonderful launch so far

The book has been out for a few days now, and it’s doing fantastically well! Some very big names in the field have endorsed the book, and one of them, Ken Wilber (who wrote the foreword) sent out an email to his massive number of followers, which really helped to launch the book.

In the last few days, I’ve received wonderful emails from readers. And I've already been contacted for translation into German and Danish. This is all starting on a much bigger note than I anticipated, and I couldn’t be more happy :-)

If you want to help

It would be wonderful if you could help to spread the word! You can

forward this message to people you feel would be interested in the topic

talk about it on Facebook/Twitter/Linked-in…

If you read the book, you can also share passages you particularly like on relevant Linked-In groups, Facebook groups etc. It's a great way for other people to get a taste for the book's content.

If you have any other ideas to help the ideas in the book to spread, don’t be shy, I'd love to hear them :-)

"Everything you need to know about building a new paradigm organization!"— Richard Barrett, Chairman and founder of the Barrett Values Centre

“Impressive! Brilliant! This book is a world-changer”—Jenny Wade, Ph.D., Author of Changes of Mind“Sweeping and brilliant in scope. Exhilarating and deeply hopeful.”—Norman Wolfe, Author of The Living Organization​